Tomato Sunscald: Identify and Prevent

If you notice a dry crack or burn on your tomatoes, your tomatoes might be going through sunscald. Fortunately, it is not a plant disease. So it would be easy to prevent your tomatoes from getting sunscald.

Though tomatoes are sun-loving crops if directly exposed to the sun in excessively hot weather, they develop sunscalds. Not only tomatoes but pepper, squash, and watermelon are also victims of sunscald. Due to sunscald, tomatoes turn pale white or blotchy yellow. Fruits and leaves of the tomato plants can also be impacted due to sunscald.

But now the question is, how can you prevent these tomato sunscalds? The best remedy is the prevention step. You cannot treat it, but as it is not an official disease, it does not impact all your tomato fruits. 

What Does Tomato Sunscald Look Like?

When your tomatoes are directly exposed to sunlight in excessive heat, they form:

• Unripe tomatoes develop white light patches, or yellowish patches are formed on ripened tomatoes.
• The white or yellow patches turn bleb.
• The affected area turns flat or sunk, the layer seems thin and papery, and the color becomes grayish-white at this stage. 
• If you still notice the growth in the affected tomato fruit, the affected area remains the same and won’t grow, and even it would split.
• The splitted area can form a black molt, and the fruit starts to rot from the affected area of the fruit. 

Identifying Sunscald in Tomatoes

Various symptoms of sunscald are as follows:

• Unripe or ripe fruit develops whitish or pale gray patches. 
• The area of fruit exposed directly to the sun turns large and pale.
• The patches turn bleb.
• The growth is continued in the sunken area and causes a split in the fruits.
• The sunscald area develops black mold and rot.
• The affected area’s skin becomes thin and becomes pale.

Many tomato diseases seem like sunscald, so you can differentiate them by noticing the following:

• When the sun directly falls on the tomato and enters the garden, it is mostly sunscald.
• If the bottom part of the tomato has a spot and it is turned to black color, it is bottom end rot.
• The white or fluffy area on the tomato is most probably powdery mildew.

Many more tomato diseases look similar to sunscald than we have discussed above.

Causes of Sunscald Tomatoes

The main reason for tomato sunscald is direct exposure to sunlight in scorching weather conditions. 

I have listed a few common mistakes of gardeners which directly exposes their developing fruits to sunlight.

• When gardeners cannot shade their exposed tomatoes either by shading them or readjusting them under the plant’s foliage.
• Especially in the case of indeterminate varieties of tomatoes, if vines are disturbed during harvesting, tomato sunscald arises. 
• Excessive or unplanned pruning of tomato plant’s leaves fails to provide shade to the fruits. 

Can You Eat Sunburned Tomatoes?

If the tomatoes are diagnosed only with sunscald, and if it has no other infection like bottom rot, black mold, etc., you can trim the affected area, and the good part of your tomatoes are safely edible. 

How Should You Treat Sunscald?

If your tomatoes are already impacted due to sunscald, unfortunately, they cannot be treated and are considered damaged.

Fortunately, it is not a disease or pest, so you can easily prevent your other developing tomatoes from getting sunscald.

You can pluck the affected fruits and use shade cloth for rest of the tomatoes to prevent them from too much direct sunlight. You can use a tomato tube cover or mesh cloches.

7 Ways To Prevent Sunscald in Tomatoes – My Proven Ways

Obviously, it is not tough to control sunscald, but it requires a few precautions and planning while planting tomatoes to prevent sunscald.

For beautiful and delicious red, purple, or orange juicy tomatoes, go through the below seven tips and tricks to avoid tomato sunscald.

Keep Tomato Fruit Shaded

Tomatoes do not necessarily require light to ripen. When fruits are directly exposed to sunlight, it prevents the actual color of the fruit, leading to sunscald. 

You can prevent it easily by keeping the tomato plant’s leaf healthier and protecting the tomatoes from direct exposure to sunlight.

The foliage cover act as a natural sunscreen for the tomatoes. It provides the exact quantity of shade needed for the healthy growth and development of the fruits.

For healthy growth of plants, enough watering, rich and nutrient soil, and good exposure to sunlight is quite essential. After this, all these preventive care would be helpful to maintain a good leaf layer. 

Prune Tomato Plant Carefully

For setting a high number of tomatoes, pruning the plants is an important step because it helps the plant focus more and use the maximum of its energy to produce fruits.

But most gardeners make the mistake of over pruning, due to which excessive leaves of the plant are removed.

Overpruning leads to exposing the fruits directly to sunlight. It also interrupts the process of photosynthesis and becomes less capable of producing fruits.

Removal of too many tomato leaves can stress the plant because the plants cannot get enough nutrients. It would result in less fruit production and more disease.

Limited pruning can increase the yield and become less susceptible to disease. It is recommended to avoid over-pruning your tomato plants. So ensure to keep at least 1-2 leaves above every flower to protect the maturing fruits.

Avoid Overhead Irrigation

Due to overhead irrigation, water can settle on the fruits, which attracts more sunlight, and sunscald happens on the fruits. It is better to water the base of the tomato plant.

Water droplets on the fruits attract more sunlight and even make the situation worse. Overhead irrigation also attracts various diseases, which can even kill the plant and worsen the quality of the fruits.

It is better to use soaker hoses and drip lines to water on the base of the plants. It would let your plant’s leaves and fruits dry. 

Mulch Your Plants

Mulching your plant at least 1-2 inches can help manage the good moisture level in your plant and keeps the low-hanging leaves and fruit dry.

Mulching is proven to be much more effective, especially during rainy climates.

Splashing water due to rain causes droplets on the leaves, fruits, and the lower portion of the plant, and mulching helps reduce this risk.

You can prevent soil-borne diseases using straw, chipped leaves, and landscape fabric. It also suppresses weeds and maintains proper moisture in the soil. 

Actively Prevent Diseases

Tomato disease reduces the energy of the plant and makes the plant weak, which ultimately reduces the foliages on the plant.

Due to fewer leaves on the plant, the fruits are exposed to sunlight leading to sunscald.

Leaf curling, yellowing, and wilting lead to foliage falling, and fruits are exposed to the hot sun and trapped by sunscalds.

Grow Heat Tolerant and Disease Resistant Varieties

Tomatoes are very delicate fruits and are prone to many diseases and pathogens. To overcome this problem plant breeders researched and successfully developed tomato seeds that are less likely to get harmful diseases like verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt, bacterial wilt, and others. They are resistant to these diseases.

The pathogen-resilient breed becomes less prone to defoliating diseases, which results in sunscald. Some disease resilient codes are F, LB, V, TSW, EB, and FW. Early Girl, Big Beef, and Sungold are most preferred.

Some of the heat-tolerant tomatoes useful for hot areas with wild sunlight are ‘Grand Marshall’, ‘Estiva’, ‘Florida 91’, and ‘Heatmaster Hybrid’.

These varieties can put up with heat, and their foliages can develop abandoned leaves which can prevent the fruits from sunscalding. 

Harvest Early

You can even choose harvesting tomatoes at the “breaker Stage,” where your green fruit would show the symptom of ripening if your tomatoes are developing sunscald and other diseases while ripening fruit in the later stage.

If the tomatoes are plucked at “Breaker Stage” the risk of many other diseases, pests, sunscalds, etc, are also controlled.

Now you can leave your green plucked tomatoes indoors for ripening in paper bags or beside bananas and yet can end up getting delicious and flavorful tomatoes.

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Summary

Tomatoes become victims of extreme sunlight, which leads them to sunscald. It mainly happens due to fewer foliage on the tomato plant. As a result, the fruits are exposed to direct sunlight and tomato sunscald happens. Tomato plants can naturally shade their flowers and fruits with their leafy foliage above them.

Thus it is highly recommended not to prune your tomato plants over. Also, avoid overhead irrigation (use soaker hoses and drip irrigation for watering) and do your best to protect your plant from various diseases and pests. And your tomato plants’ foliage would be protected, which can later protect its blossoms and fruits in hot climates.

Unfortunately, there is no treatment for sunscald-affected tomatoes; it will keep discoloring your tomatoes if they are not provided with shade.

So an easy remedy is early harvesting and shading your remaining developing fruit with clothes. You can also remove the affected fruit, trim the discolored area, and use them.